Asking China to Investigate the Bidens is Worse Than Trump’s Asking the Ukraine

This morning, Donald Trump asked China and the Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. This itself is remarkable. It’s very unusual for a diplomat to ask that another country to investigate one of its own citizens. The job of a head of state and the state department they run is to protect its citizens, even when their own citizen is in the wrong. Foreign laws and their violation hold almost no value while promoting the interests of ones own citizens does.

Here, we see that inverted. Hunter Biden is a private citizen. Joe Biden is a public one, and Trump has asked two governments to investigate them.

One of the defenses offered Republicans is that there was no quid-pro-quo offered. However, Trump’s own “transcript” of the event details the Ukrainian president asking to buy missiles and Trump swiftly pivoting to:

I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.

The original rough transcript can and should be read aloud to get a sense of how clear the transactional nature was communicated.

Nevertheless, a stunning (to me) number of people do not see this as a quid pro quo.

Today, however, Trump repeats his call for investigations into the Bidens. Next week, China’s delegation is visiting the United States for trade talks. He said this as the president at the White House on his way to Marine One. He said this moments after discussing progress on negotiations with Beijing.

The idea that the Chinese would not see an investigation of the Bidens as a chip to use in bargaining with the United States is laughable. The idea that Trump is concerned that anyone has violated Chinese law is laughable, and given the nature of Chinese law and punishment, his false concern is disgusting as well.

To me, that is.

There is nothing near universal support for impeachment. To millions, what Trump has done and continues to do is wholesome and good and even heroic. In all likelihood, Trump serves this term either without impeachment or if impeached without being convicted in the United States Senate.

When this happens, future presidents should take note. Should, for example, the next president be Elizabeth Warren, she should fire the Attorney General and several layers of the FBI. She should appoint Debbie Wasserman Shultz to be Attorney General and let her hand-pick everyone who works for her.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Actually, let’s go on. Assuming a Democratic majority in the Senate, make Noam Chomsky the Secretary of Defense. Glenn Greenwald can be the Director of the CIA. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can be the Secretary of Commerce. Joy-Ann Reid will be Secretary of State. Warren’s 24-year old Marine side piece can be Director of National Intelligence. If any of these disappoint and not be brutally partisan, that is OK. They can be quickly replaced by whoever has supplicated themselves on MSNBC.

The first day on the job, fire the head of ICE. On every subsequent day, fire whoever happens to be the acting head of ICE.

The temptation, of course, would be to say these things would be bad. I am not sure this should be so quickly conceded.

If the office of the presidency is going to be one that allows she who wields it to determine who gets prosecuted and who gets excused, then you want the good guys to wield that power.

If the office of the presidency is going to go further than that and use diplomatic pressure to get other countries to prosecute political rivals, then you definitely want to be the one applying the pressure rather than the one facing extradition to China.

And just because the other side thinks they are the good guys just as fervently as you do doesn’t mean that you don’t also trust your own goodness. For the good of the country, you must consolidate your power and use the Department of Justice to prosecute your enemies before they can get the presidency back and do the same to you. Investigating, prosecuting, and jailing Eric Trump is actually more important than packing the Supreme Court with all the people you took selfies with on the campaign trail.

If instead, one takes the presidency and runs all departments in a dignified manner with justice for all, at some point your side will lose an election and we’ll be back to someone else’s malicious dictatorship instead of your benign one.

This is, of course, only to be done if Trump remains in office. If his behavior is to be judged as unacceptable, even at this late point, it would show that our democracy doesn’t have to be run solely for the benefit of one’s side. I am curious to find out which country we live in.

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Vikram Bath is the pseudonym of a former business school professor living in the United States with his wife, daughter, and dog. (Dog pictured.) His current interests include amateur philosophy of science, business, and economics. Tweet at him at @vikrambath1.

132 Responses

“Nevertheless, a stunning (to me) number of people do not see this as a quid pro quo.”

Those same people, will, without pause, find the Quid Pro Quo of a foreign government donating money to the Clinton Foundation (or any other foundation associated with a Democratic Politician*), even though such donations have no emails or phone call transcripts supporting the notion.

On a tangential note, Sanders and Warren have got to be feeling hurt that Trump isn’t asking foreign governments to investigate them. Clearly we can see who Trump is threatened by.

*Likewise how any business dealing of a foreign government with any of Trumps business has no QPQ.Report

Trump sees Biden as the biggest threat becaues Biden is the kind of guy Trump understands and relates to. Biden is an old school mans man type. Garrulous, in your face and a a generic boomer man. Warren is a woman so he inherently respects her less. Bernie is a weird left winger academic. Trump didn’t grow up with them in the NYC real estate world so bernie is incomprehensible outsider. Trump fears what he knows and doesn’t understand why warren or bernie might be tough for him.Report

China- big trade negotiations are coming up in the next couple weeks. He can offer favorable terms. It has already been reported he told the Chinese he wouldn’t make any fuss about Hong Kong. So not being a beacon of freedom for people yearning for yada yada yada is helpful to the Chinese gov.

He has given favorable treatment to the Chinese at times when, purely coincidentally…his real estate company was going into business with the ChiGov in a large development in asia ( i ithink it was indonesia). And Ivanka got sweet deals on IP for her business, so i’m guessing they got something in return.Report

Yeah your right here. He is sporked everything by mixing his personal with his higher duty. Yup he F’d it. Shame there was no radical transparency with firm moral foundation of being above reproach or completely divesting himself or, since that would be no fun, just not have a global developer with interests, hidden and open, in various countries as prez. You are correct there. High five.

And the QPQ coming up is about US gov trade negotiations, not his, and he hasn’t exactly been speaking up for the protesters in HK much now has he. So maybe he will give the chinese favorable concessions over US interests so he can get sham evidence from a sort of unpleasant dictatorship.Report

find the Quid Pro Quo of a foreign government donating money to the Clinton Foundation (or any other foundation associated with a Democratic Politician*), even though such donations have no emails or phone call transcripts supporting the notion.

Keep in mind HRC sold pardons without reaching the level of Quid Pro Quo.

What seems to be happening is “relationship building” or “buying access”. I will constantly throw money at the Clintons and make me their “friend”. They will look for ways to use their position to do “favors” for me. It’s not a transaction if we don’t make it specific.

A lot of (non)transactions seem to fall into this category. They hit the radar as an abuse of power and a corruption of the system, but we haven’t found a good way to make it illegal (and maybe we can’t).

The end result is still unseemly amounts of money ending up in the hands of a politicians’ favorite charity/relative and the occasional unseemly “favor” done for the entities which do this. IMHO it’s very appropriate to shine a light on that sort of thing just to reduce how often it happens.Report

John Kerry’s step-son was a partner of Hunter Biden and broke with him over the Ukrainian Burisma deal, unwilling to take part in something that looked so obviously corrupt. The New York Post put it this way:

Heinz parted ways with both men after raising concerns about corruption in Ukraine and questions about appearance.

“The lack of judgment in this matter was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationships with Mr. Archer and Mr. Biden,” Heinz spokesman Chris Bastardi told the newspaper.

A person with family money, like Chris Heinz of the Heinz ketchup family, has room to value their reputation and honor above some shady contract with a bunch of cut throat oligarchs.

Meanwhile, I saw this:

Breaking: The whistleblower is a registered Democrat and CIA analyst who was detailed before the 2016 election to the Obama White House, where he worked on the NSC’s Ukraine desk & met w anti-Trump Ukrainian officials before being sent packing by the Trump NSC & becoming disgruntled.

If he was meeting with the “anti-Trump” Ukrainian officials, he was probably neck deep in attempts to rig the 2016 election, and is likely in the same bed with them in terms of legal exposure. He has possibly stayed in contact with them, and with others associated with the NSC and CIA, and his information may have came from the Ukrainians who’d had the corrupt deals, or from Russian intelligence.

Updated to add:

BREAKING: The Democrat whistleblower who complained about Trump digging up dirt in Ukraine was himself helping dig up dirt in Ukraine against Trump (and Manafort) while working in the Obama White House during 2016 campaign.

Bill Clinton’s pardoning of Marc Rich absolutely should be considered a quid pro quo. I regard this as obvious as well

Ethically? Sure. People as far to the Left as Jimmy Carter have said there was clearly a connection between the money and the pardon.

Legally? No. The gov spent time and money looking into this and concluded there was no illegality. Presumably that translates into English as “not provable in court because telepathy isn’t a thing”.

This example, with both the resources spent investigating it and it’s clarity, showcase the limitations of the law and how high level elites get around it. This is not to say that all high level elites behave this way, much less all the time. The Clintons, like Trump, imho are truly exceptional in that regard.

And then, having had what can be done showcased, we enter this world were random noise can be interpreted as data, and maybe it is. Bill’s charity accepts large amounts of money from corrupt companies or countries, the gov does (doesn’t do) something to/for them, were they connected? We clearly can’t depend on the ethics of the people involved because they have none. The Trump equiv is insane, his empire is everywhere, it’s always buying land and renting stuff, if it didn’t predate his political power by decades it’d look like a money laundering organization.Report

Honestly, I would appreciate it if some of the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates would start talking about this very thing. They could talk, for instance, about asking the Philippines to investigate the Trump Organization’s dealings there, and they could do it a week before we do our annual meeting over US Military bases there. And so on.Report

Exactly. The only tricky scenario McConnell would face is maintaining GOP control of the Senate if polling for marginal incumbents tips on the Trump impeachment issue. Personally, I think he’d prioritize the Senate over Trump if it came down to it.Report

Democrats are putting McConnell in the catbird’s seat. McConnell gets to make up the rules for any trial in the Senate. He can spend all of 2019 and 2020 conducting a deep investigation into Democrat corruption, issuing subpoenas for, well, everything.

He doesn’t at all have to behave as Republicans did during the Clinton impeachment trial, where they let the House provide evidence and basically run the show. But he does have precedent. Nancy was so convinced that impeachment was inevitable that in 2018 she rewrote the House’s rules of impeachment so that Republicans can’t play a role, other than having their votes counted at the end of it.

So I’m buying stock in popcorn companies.

The reason to ask China some tough questions is that obviously someone over there gave $1.5 billion in Chinese assets to a person with drug and alcohol issues who had close ties to a US politician. That’s not a very wise thing to do, and I’m sure Xi and the Chinese public will want to know who made that decision, and why. We’d like to know, too. Was it in return for shipping a bunch of our factories over there, or for looking the other way as they claimed the South China Sea? Or was it in return for staying mum about the roundup of millions of Chinese Muslims? Maybe it was so we’d look the other way at rampant Chinese collusion, spying, bribery, and influence operations. The Democrats kept saying “Russia! Russia! Russia!” but the real bad actor is China.

The thing about corruption is that most politicians live in glass houses, so Chinese won’t call out US corruption, and Republicans and Democrats usually won’t call out each other’s questionable dealings unless they get splashed all over the front pages. Well, Trump has no qualms about it. He’s been investigated by a small army of government attorneys who subpoenaed just about everything in this world and the next. He’s been wiretapped, subject to leaks, and had spies planted in his campaign.

Now it’s Trump’s turn to put politicians under the microscope and let the wheel’s of justice grind finely. He campaign on draining the swamp, and as that happens, a whole lot of skeletons and rusted out cars are going to rise out of the mud. As someone who loves forensics and hidden secrets, this will be a whole lot of fun!Report

George, I would appreciate it if you would address Vikram’s main point. I’d like to know how you would feel about it if a Democratic President – let’s say President Sanders for the sake of argument – started with this stuff?

What if the delegation from Singapore were scheduled to visit Washington for trade talks and a week before that President Sanders said, “I have a lot of options with Singapore. If they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power” and then thirty seconds later said, “I think they should investigate the Trump Organization’s dealings in that country, especially Eric Trump’s business”

Would that be ok with you? It wouldn’t be ok with me, but maybe I’m out of step with where America is at.Report

No he wouldn’t because George only cares about supporting right-wing causes that activate his full fever brain. Impunity for Republicans, damnation for the libs. Everyone should know this by now. Why people still give him charitable and full faith and credit readings is beyond me?Report

Not only were foreign governments asked for dirt on Trump, the intelligence apparatus of the United States was directed at destroying him. They colluded with Russian intelligence agents. They wiretapped Trump Tower. They planted spies in his campaign. They framed campaign officials. They lied to courts. They fabricated evidence. They leaked classified intelligence and unredacted documents. The violated rules of Federal procedure. They rigged investigations. They sabotaged his Presidency. They discussed conducting a coup under the 25th Amendment. They assigned pro-Hillary prosecutors to investigate him for two years. About the only thing they didn’t do is try to assassinate him, at least that we know of.

It’s just made him stronger than they could ever imagine. 🙂

They sowed the winds, and now they can reap the whirlwinds.

But unlike Trump, where after two years of one of the most intensive investigations in history that concluded that not only didn’t Trump collude with the Russians, nobody knowingly did (except perhaps for the investigators writing the report), there was definitely lots of funny business in 2016 (as I mentioned above) that needs to be investigated. Trump is having it investigated, and let the chips fall where they may.Report

That wasn’t all Hillary, since she had been replaced as Secretary of State by John Kerry. The FBI and CIA, along with other federal agencies and departments that were neck deep in rigging the 2016 election, weren’t getting their marching orders from the DNC, they were getting them from the top of the Obama Administration.Report

He doesn’t. The Senate has a set of standing rules and procedures for how an impeachment trial is to be conducted. McConnell lacks the supermajority needed to change those rules using normal means, and almost certainly lacks the simple majority to change them via the nuclear option. Once the trial starts, control is largely in the hands of the Chief Justice. The Senate can overrule his decisions on procedure, but must do so by roll call vote every single time. Same thought as for rule changes — McConnell won’t have 51 votes to overrule the CJ.Report

McConnell is playing this cool as a cucumber, as usual. All he’s committed to is having a vote in the Senate (“we have to take it up”) while leaving his options open depending on which way the political winds are blowing at that time. Meanwhile, judges – the only thing McConnell cares about at this point – will continue being confirmed.Report

While support for Impeachment is overall higher than it has been (or at least an inquiry), Trump’s support among the GOP base/own the lib set (see George and Jaybird below) is still at plus 90 percent. That number needs to go way down before anyone but a retiring or former Republican makes any noises about this.

Still the smarter Republicans (if they exist) and have not fallen to ownthelibsitis should realize that this ius a disaster. I might be assuming facts not evidence, like the existence of smarter Republicans.Report

All Trump has to do is inspire his opponents to treat this like a dialectic.

You can get your “Impeach Trump” (where the ‘u’ is a hammer and sickle) hat here. Let people at Trader Joe’s know where you stand! Make new friends when they come up to you and tell you “I like your hat!” (Maybe you’ll even get laid!)

(Full disclosure: Ordinary Times is part of the Amazon Affiliate program and we get a small percentage of all products purchased through links created on this site.)Report

Do you realize that Democrats hate Glenn Greenwald and think he basically exists to troll Democrats by being a “Fox News leftist”? Also why the Noam Chomsky example? Since when as a Democratic administration done anything like that?Report

This, but also it’s not like all have Trump’s picks have mapped exactly with what he ultimately wanted. Bolton, for example. Anyway, the point isn’t to start with the right set of names but instead try people out and replace them when any of them isn’t acting in a way that delivers maximum benefit to you and maximum punishment on your perceived enemiesReport

They are at the point of literally embracing corruption, even to the point of having foreign nations interfere in our elections. Its the Amari/ French dispute on steroids, where in the conflict between liberal democracy and white supremacy, they decide that it is democracy that has to be jettisoned.

We like to imagine that our liberty and freedoms are guaranteed somehow by our Constitution and market economy, but they really aren’t.

America could become a totalitarian one party state without changing a word of the Constitution or anything about our economic system, merely by enough people wishing it to be so.

And right now, there’s a scary number of people who wish it were so.Report

From CNN: “During a phone call with Xi on June 18, Trump raised Biden’s political prospects as well as those of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who by then had started rising in the polls, according to two people familiar with the discussion. In that call, Trump also told Xi he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed.”

That last sentence would have been a scandal in any prior administration. Today it’s how America rolls.Report

I think the corruption probe will probably focus on the dismissed ambassador and the goings on at the US embassy, which famously sent Ukraine’s government a list of people and entities who were not to be investigated, including George Soros’s foundation.Report

That was from Ukrainian prosecutors, who say they’re reopening a bunch of investigations, including investigations into Burisma. We were telling them who could and couldn’t be prosecuted, and our embassy was bragging about it. Heck, one of the people here cited a speech by the US ambassador who was talking about how much we were pushing their prosecutors office to “reform”. Soros’s e-mail to the US State Department also focused on the importance of changing the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor Joe Biden got fired led many of those reforms, but refused to drop his investigation into Burisma (the opposite of what Burisma’s DC-based PR firm told the world).

In a country where everyone was incredibly corrupt, including many of their presidents, the person who controls the corruption investigations is king. Thus all the outside interest in controlling that office.

As an aside, Adam Schiff has pretty deep ties to Ukrainian arms manufacturers, and Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Jr, who co-founded an energy company that was indicted for fraud by the SEC, was in Ukraine as recently as 2017.Report

There isn’t anywhere else to put this, so I’m going to rant against Trump’s xenophobia and immigration policy here. On October 15, 2019, immigrants applying for permanent status will have to file an I-944. This form bears the very Orwellian title Declaration of Self Sufficiency. Its purpose is to expand the definition of public charge to eliminate practically everybody who isn’t wealthy and white. For over a hundred years, ever since the 19th century, federal law defined public charge as somebody where half or more of their income came from government assistance. Now it’s going to be defined as anybody who ever received public assistance in any form for whatever period. The form is 19 pages long and will take hours for people to fill out. Its demands are nearly impossible. It asks for credit reports, etc.

Trump and all the members of administration are thieving bigs. They have been enriching themselves at the expense of the public. They stuff themselves with public money and steal from the poor to give to the wealthy. Yet the Evangelicals, those true and devote followers of Christ, eat this stuff up because of their cocaine level addiction to white supremacy in the name of Protestant Aryan Christ. In a just universe they would be boiled in a pot filled with their own excrement as molten gold and silver are poured on their flesh and down their throat. Yet, they are going to cause harm to countries millions and get away with it.Report

Trump asked Russia for Clinton’s emails during the campaign. We can argue about him getting fewer votes than Clinton, but he won the election, sort of validating in a way that the public was OK with it. We don’t know, however, that they are OK with putting a hold on military assistance to an ally as a condition. The quid pro quo forms a clear dividing line between his pre-election behavior and postReport

But haven’t 100% of Democrats demanded that their political opponents be investigated for every conceivable action? Is there anything Trump has ever produced that they haven’t tried to subpoena? Is there anyone in his campaign or in his administration who hasn’t been targeted?

Where is the rule that Democrats can investigate Republicans for anything, forever and all time, and even frame them, but no Republicans are ever allowed to investigate a Democrat for framing a Republican or other egregious abuses?Report

And Hillary committed how many felonies regarding her e-mail servers? Just the existence of her e-mail servers was a felony, as was erasing the information on them once their existence was discovered and put under Congressional subpoena.Report

And Condaleeza Rice had the same type of servers as did Colin Powell . . . . neither of whom was investigated by Congress. And the House could have made referrals for those felonies if they believed there was evidence – its not like Republican Chairs of the House Judiciary Committee were Clinton’s friends. But they didn’t make criminal referrals, because there was nothing to refer.

And again – Hillary is no longer a politician or secretary of state or anything else political. Mr. Trump is currently President. That means his conduct matters here and now.Report

The FBI and IG looked into it extensively. Powell received two e-mails that were later considered to be classified or confidential, and stands by his decision to use an early model Blackberry in lieu of phoning someone. Condi’s aides received 10 total e-mails to their own private accounts (probably on AOL or Yahoo).

Clinton was running a completely off-the-books operation, with tens of thousands of missing e-mails, scrubbed servers, and computers and phones that she had smashed with hammers.

Fortunately, the DoJ investigation into her e-mail situation is still ongoing, which might be the only thing that will stop her from becoming the 2020 nominee.Report

Just to be clear, there doesn’t need to be any quid pro quo for this to be a full scale assault on American democracy.

And that is the sound of goal posts being moved.

Very likely it’s not going to be the last time, I’ve already heard from Team Blue “and we know that’s not the only thing he’s done”, with emoluments being thrown in there. We may get back to Stormy and Russia.Report

Technically it doesn’t matter since impeachment is apolitical action not a legal one. Thankfully the President has managed to clearly outline two quid pro quo incidents now regarding investigations of a political opponent.Report

Now, now… the Moral defenses of RealPolitik (vs. the Historical Criticism) are similar to those for Just War:

* The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; * All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; * There must be serious prospects of success; * The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition).

(from wikipedia)

Prudence, wisdom and statecraft are required to adjudicate among the above considerations as they apply to any particular situation in any particular location.

Which, incidentally, is why it looks different depending on time, place and means… such that it can *appear* inconsistent in application; even when it is not inconsistent from a Moral perspective. So it is possible to have consistent moral condemnation of other states and yet actions constrained by the principles above (and others… those are but a thumbnail).

The real inconsistency is having Universal deontological Morals for Statecraft, but inconsistent means for applying them such that you are constantly granting exceptions to your Rules rather than planning actions according to your means and expected outcomes.

Trump is neither a Realist nor a Neo-Con/Lib… he’s, unsurprisingly, a (cautious) Opportunist; cautious in the sense that he wants a greater degree of certainty of success to act than a typical Neo-Con, and cautious in that he fears failure even more than he looks for success (in Foreign Policy). To date, anyhow… I’ve no idea how he will react in a crisis foreign or domestic.Report

As I get older, I find myself seeing that, yeah, sometimes you have to make hard compromises because, let’s face it, despite being omnibenevolent, we are not omnipotent.

Anyway, I imagine that we are going to find out that there have been a *LOT* of deals made in the past (even the recent past) by a *LOT* of Presidents. Even the ones we thought were omnibenevolent.Report

I want to second this. And I feel I should point out that George H. W. Bush was deeply involved in the Iranian hostage thing. I.e., we tend to think of Bush I as scandal-free, but that’s because he had his scandal _years earlier_.

I want to further point out that ‘impeachable scandals’, at this point, seem to firmly position themselves on the Republican side, despite the fact the only impeachment in modern history has been on the other side.

Although I guess I own George W. props for…well, I guess technically he lied us into war, didn’t he? That probably should be impeachable too…not lying to the public, but systematic deliberate attempts to mislead Congress? That probably should be impeachable? I dunno. That, at least, is a political question. So let’s say not.

But using foreign connections and promises made on the United Stated to get elected…is not a political question. It’s something that _obviously_ is not allowed…well, apparently, it is now.Report

I would very much have liked to have Romney as President than Trump. Having said that, running for it automagically draws all sorts of nasty allegations, and Trump can survive that while Romney couldn’t.Report

you acknowledge that what Trump is doing is wrong and harmful to the Republic

True. And I continue to say that President Pence has a great ring to it.

you accept this as preferable to Democratic Party holding power.

I’m pretty sure Pence isn’t a Democrat.

Team Red isn’t going to touch Pence short of him committing open murder. He’s Trump’s replacement and he himself can’t be replaced without Team Blue stopping it which would be Nancy being Trump’s replacement.

Think about just how corruptive you think Trump’s actions are.

Now consider that I think HRC has been doing this kind of shit for decades… and not only has Team Blue lived with it but they have mostly refused to even admit that there’s a problem.

If that kind of selfish tribalism exists for Team Blue then I’m sure it’s there for Team Red, so I think what we’re doing here is wasting everyone’s time. You’ve got your one bullet, you’re going to spend it on impeaching Trump for daring to suggest a corrupt Democrat getting money from a corrupt company should be investigated.

I don’t think that is going to convince independent people that Team Blue is on the side of angels and should be trusted with power. I certainly don’t think it’s going to convince Trump’s supporters, who you need.Report

If you think President Pence is a good idea, does that mean you support impeachment?

In theory? Yes. However I’m not sure we’re there and I’m not sure we can be there. I don’t think we can, or should, impeach him for simply being Trump and doing something for which the Dems would give a pass to one of their own.

“Because Trump” reasoning spoils everything (which is why he encourages it). Think about a trial of a guilty man where the judge and jury turn out to be bribed. In theory he never should have been made President at all, however before we elites decide the peasants couldn’t possibly have intended “that”, the system is designed to allow it for good reason.

In your telling of it, this is and has been the norm in America for a while now, and Trump is merely the Republican version.

HRC is not now, nor ever was, the entire Democrat establishment much less “the norm in America”. She’s a point at which the system fails to work completely, and it’s appropriate to point to those failures. Like Trump she hits the radar as totally amoral and gaming the system.

But that’s not to say the system isn’t getting better, nor that the system didn’t mostly work. Think about any political crime done anywhere in the world over the last century. My assumption is either of them would sleep soundly after doing that and the reason they didn’t do something like that is the system doesn’t let them.Report

Should Democratic mayors order their police forces to investigate any Republican businessmen and see what they can turn up?

If your “this is worthy of impeachment” standard is ording investigations on innocent people for political self-benefits, then I suggest you go re-read “travelgate”. We spent the resources to detail exactly who did what, the timeline paints HRC doing exactly that.

So if Trump isn’t impeached, would you be accepting of President Warren doing the same things?

If Warren does that I’ll add “ethically heinous” to her list of flaws, but I very much doubt the Dems would allow her impeachment regardless of what we do about Trump.

For example, would you have been fine with impeaching HRC the moment she took office considering her history of doing things like this? Am I supposed to think the Dems would have been fine doing that?

I’m fine treating Trump as the same kind of person as HRC, and expect the same kind of behavior from him. If I thought that impeaching her would have been a pointless waste of time because Team Blue would never allow it for what we know she’s done, then I don’t see why I’m supposed to think better of Team Red.

Or could I dismiss your objection as merely “because Warren”?

If I’d tried to set up impeachment before she got elected and attempted to do so over things I have a history of finding acceptable when my side did it? Of course you could dismiss those objections.Report

The question in front of the American people is, what are the standards that we are willing to accept?

Team Blue already answered that one years ago.

I am saying that inviting hostile foreign dictatorships to investigate your American political rivals is worthy of impeachment.

This specific issue came up during the election when Trump invited a hostile foreign dictatorship to investigate his political rival’s emails.

Trying to impeach him on this is, imho, not a strong play. It’s like Clinton’s impeachment, yes, he did stuff that he could be impeached over; No, it won’t matter as long as he’s popular with his base.

Now clearly Team Blue is going to go for it, and if you can convince Trump’s base that it’s all about ethics and not about “because Trump” then we’ll get President Pence and be better for it in a lot of ways. However, having spent several decades showing that you don’t give a damn about ethics when HRC is doing it, imho I don’t think this is going to work.Report

“We’ve had to endure a lot in the last two years,” (AOC) said, “I’m not here to police your reactions to it because we all need to go through our process. Feel what you need to feel. But I am going to move on because, frankly, I think the whole thing is boring, he should have been impeached a long time ago, and like, I’m over it,” she added punctuating her comments with enough levity to elicit chuckles from the room.

There is a limited amount of news bandwidth. She doesn’t want herself to be crowded out from an OJ style trial of Trump.

And in terms of strategy for Team Blue, I’d say the problem isn’t that AOC would be crowded out but Warren/Sanders/Biden would be crowded out (the last less so because the news would be filled with his son).Report

In the iterated prisoner’s game, pointing out that, sure, you might have defected too but that doesn’t make it okay for the other person to defect is not exactly the appeal to the principle of “always collaborate” that you seem to think it is.Report

Harris is. As for Warren, there are a handful of reasons to trust her judgment/honesty. Buttigieg would make a fine VP, I suppose.

“What excuse are you going to use this time?”

I’m probably going to use some variant of “I’m going to vote for the candidate I want to be President” and write in Amash or something.

And I’m sure that I’ll deal with my Democratic friends explaining to me that this is support of Trump and this election, being the most important of our lifetime, is too important for mastubatory voting in between similar lectures from how this is support of (whomever) from my Republican friends (but the speech is more or less identical to the Dem one after that).Report

What excuse are you going to use this time? What will be the 2020 version of “but her emails!” that provides a convenient excuse to support Trump and deny responsibility?

If “ethics” was your top priority in 2016 then you should have voted for Trump (or at least a 3rd party candidate), because he didn’t have the vast history of political corruption that HRC does. However for 2020 afaict all of the Dems in the field easily beat Trump on that score for 2020.

In 2020 I’m going to vote on the candidate who seems to either do good things for the economy (or who will do the least amount of damage). It’s a coinflip whether the Dems’ nominee will have promised so much economic destruction that I’ll have no choice but vote Trump… which would be an accomplishment considering his trade wars and immigration policies.

Oh, and corruption is also a hit against the economy, how big a hit depends on the scale.

However ask yourself whether Romney (or any taint free GOP candidate) vs HRC would have been enough to swing your vote in 2016 before you proclaim you care about this issue.Report

I need a copy of that New Yorker cartoon of people sitting around a campfire with the ruins of the city in the background, and the narrator saying, “But man, it was totally worth it for the tax cuts!”Report

If your “this is worthy of impeachment” standard is ording investigations on innocent people for political self-benefits, then I suggest you go re-read “travelgate”. We spent the resources to detail exactly who did what, the timeline paints HRC doing exactly that.

LOL. Travelgate was an scandal, but the scandal part was the corrupt replacement.

The ‘ordering investigations on innocent people for political self-benefits’ claim is nonsense, mostly because the White House was fairly careful and didn’t order investigations of anyone…they asked the FBI to look into ‘possible improprieties’ in the White House travel office.

But it was not for ‘political self-benefit’. The firings were already going to happen, and didn’t need FBI justification. The Clinton Administration asked for investigations because they had heard a lot of very bad things about the travel office.

Which were true! The Travel Office was a complete mess and, objectively, all of the people there should have been fired! The auditing firm hired to audit them _couldn’t do an audit_ because the records were so bad. The person who got indicted had deposited checks, written to the government by media companies to cover their travel with the White House, into his own checking account! (Which apparently wasn’t actually theft, just _astonishingly_ bad management.)

Now, hiring those specific replacement was a scandal. I’ll admit that straight up. That was corruption.

But getting rid of those people was _not_. Asking the FBI to look into it…maybe. I’m not convinced of that, I think the Executive has a right to ask the FBI to look at _itself_ for improprieties. That’s not the same as demanding investigations of others.

But even if you don’t think it’s acceptable, what happened, on a scale or 1 to 10, was about a 1 on the ‘meddling with justice’ scale. And Trump’s about a 10, possibly 11, literally holding chants, in public, demanding the arrest and conviction of (coincidentally) Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton Administration never asked for the investigation of a specific person. They never asked for an indictment, or an arrest, or, worst of all, for a specific _outcome_ of a trial. They pointed at the White House Travel Office and said ‘Yeah, we’ve heard a lot of bad things, look into it’ and then stepped back.Report

The Clinton campaign had their own personal travel company filled with friends and relatives. The total number of clients this company had was one. Finding jobs for this group was a thing before the Clintons stepped foot in the WH, ergo getting rid of the existing WH travel office was on the list of things to do.

So no, it wasn’t “we need to destroy the existing travel office, oh look this group of insiders is handy”. That’s the situation that was supposed to be set up by having the FBI arrest people. She had the authority to fire the office but wanted to do so for cause, so the obvious thing to do was play the “show me the man and I’ll find you the crime”.

The Clinton Administration asked for investigations because they had heard a lot of very bad things about the travel office.

Heard what? Heard from whom? As far as I can tell those claims come from Clinton operatives at the direction of HRC, but the number of crimes found was zero and the amount of missing money was also zero. The central guy spent his life savings in court proving he was innocent. So what exactly was the problem which supposedly resulted in this and how is it that HRC “discovered” it before the Travel Office had ever been used?

The obvious conclusion is the travel office’s records being a mess had nothing to do with their firings, and wasn’t even discovered until multiple moves into this game. The investigation proved HRC lied about her involvement every step of the way to the point of perjury charges being seriously considered. She specifically lied about who wanted those people fired and when. She was the big moving force pushing every step of this.

Given that she had the authority to fire these people, even for no reason, it is very weird to think she’d lie to investigators to hide her involvement unless the situation was way less friendly than you laid out.

This is like saying Obama asked his followers to arm up and prep for gun battles with members of the GOP. The flowery rhetoric doesn’t come close to matching the actions and shouldn’t be taken literally, it’s clearly designed to inflame crowds, not judges.Report

Here’s your claim, as far as I can tell: The Clintons cleared the travel office to make way for their own people, and decided to have the FBI look into the travel office for no reason, and the fact it was a complete mess was an utter coincidence.

No. That’s silly. This was the Clintons knowing quite accurately something was wrong with the travel office, and using it for their corrupt advantage. Taking the risk of asking the FBI to look into it and discovering nothing wrong makes no sense…especially since they got cold feet _after_ they’d already asked the FBI, and asked the FBI to hold off anyway while they did an audit. They _really_ wanted to make sure the FBI wasn’t going to find everything okay if the investigation went forward. The idea they just guessed is crazy.

But I’m not going to argue that. You can continue to think the Clintons are just astonishingly good guessers.

The point I am taking issue with is the claim was there was ‘ordering investigations on innocent people for political self-benefits’. Because that’s not what happened. No one ordered investigation of people.

The Clnton administration asked for an investigation of the travel office itself (Not the people in it.) by the FBI. The FBI did so, and discovered…a lot of irregulaties. And they continued slowly investigating, and years later they came across someone who had done something _indistinishable from fraud_ and basically had to indict him.

You seem to think this had something to do with putting their own people in, something pushed by the Clintons, but the FBI indicted him December 7, 1994, almost two years after all this happened, well after it was even hypothetically possible for those people to be put in, long after the Clinton administration had ridden out the scandal. And, again, this wasn’t some made-up crime…he did something that was probably technically illegal, just…not with any malicious intent or profit.

Likewise, Hillary did have a much larger role than she admitted…in the _firings_ and attempted replacements. She had nothing at all to do with the FBI investigation as they continued to slowly go through a decade of crappy record-keeping.

And, again, I will point out how surreal it is to argue that the executive branch (The Administration) doesn’t have the right to order the executive branch (The FBI) to inspect the records of the executive branch (The Travel Office). That honestly seems _really stupid_ as an idea.

I’m all for the executive being unable to order investigation of random people, or even government employees, but saying ‘Uh, we’re hearing a lot of talk about financial irregularities in _ourself_, can you look at that?’ is…not the same thing. Honestly this entire part of the scandal seems to be they asked the FBI to look into it instead of an IG or something.

Which is kinda absurd, considering this is a textbook example of the Clintons being corrupt. It’s just…not an example of them abusing the power of the executive to investigate innocent people.Report

The Clintons cleared the travel office to make way for their own people, and decided to have the FBI look into the travel office for no reason, and the fact it was a complete mess was an utter coincidence.

Yes.

This was the Clintons knowing quite accurately something was wrong with the travel office, and using it for their corrupt advantage.

One of the basic facts is HRC lied to the point of perjury on the subject of who was firing the office and why. If she’s not attempting to get her friends and family jobs (and they’re all going to lose them if she doesn’t, her campaign is their only customer), then what’s going on?

I mean picture it. She knows the travel office is a mess and believes they’re thieves. What is so horrible about telling that truth that she needs to risk perjury, disbarment and embarrassing her husband’s presidency? She can’t say she asked them to be fired because it’s a mess and they’re thieves?

She’s afraid of looking strong? She can’t tell the truth even when it’s clearly to her advantage? She’s really stupid?

None of that sounds even slightly reasonable.

In order for this to make sense, the demand that the office be fired had to come before there was a good reason why. She needed to lie about it because her friends needing jobs was the entire reason. And btw “the office was a mess” actually means “the office kept poor records”, and not “stealing money or they couldn’t do their jobs”. The office would have been fine from the point of view of anyone working with the office as opposed to examining the books.

Multiple serious accounting errors is only obvious if the office is “missing” money which they weren’t.

The Clinton administration asked for an investigation of the travel office itself (Not the people in it.) by the FBI.

Meaning that because HRC didn’t personally know the names of the people she was ordering the FBI to find a crime for, it’s ok? One of the things mentioned is the FBI was very reluctant to do this, does that sound like there was obvious probable cause?

the FBI indicted him December 7, 1994, almost two years after all this happened

When you play “show me the man and I’ll find you the crime” it’s expected indictments happen at some point in the future. At that point the issue becomes whether or not the WH was putting pressure on the legal system to charge him because it would solve their travel gate issues.

they came across someone who had done something _indistinishable from fraud_ and basically had to indict him.

“indistinguishable” would only be the case if they were missing money. Here they weren’t. So the argument is he’s stealing… nothing… so they had to indict him? Seriously? A bad accountant who steals nothing and costs his employer nothing should be fired, not sent to prison. A judge agreed. However he spent his life savings because the gov was serious about putting him in prison.

So why were they serious about putting him in prison or finding him guilty of something, anything, that would justify HRC’s behavior? Given that there doesn’t seem to have been disagreement on what happened, I find it weird that law enforcement thinks this is worth their time unless the motivation wasn’t really justice.Report

Trump is to politics what 2008 was to white-collar employment: there’s a genuine crisis, but the largest part of what’s happening is people in charge making the structural changes they’d wanted for a long time and blaming the negative effects on The Current Situation.Report

When I first heard all of this my response was “hell, that shit gets done EVERY DAY ON EVERY LEVEL”. “Mr prime minister, we want to put short range nukes in Germany..what’s it gonna take?” Hey, dictator..we want to put a black site in your country to “interrogate” terrorists. We bring the guys to you..you squeeze them so we have deniability. What’s it gonna take?” Hey Guatemala, keep some of them migrates out of the us…here’s a billing dollars for “aide”. We won’t worry if a few hundred million goes missing, wink wink. How is this substantially different?Report

Because those sort of deals benefit the country…or, at least, are supposed to. Those specific examples probably don’t, in truth, but the US government off-the-books deals with foreign government is just something that all government do. Not every interaction or agreement is public.

The difference is Trump has decided to do those deals not to get the US something, but to help his presidential campaign.

If Trump has made a backroom deal not to press China on Hong Kong if China supported a specific position on Iran, well…various people wouldn’t like that, and it would perhaps be a bit shocking and slightly scandalous when it came out, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the level of impeachable.

Asking them to investigate HBiden in exchange for that would be unacceptable even if China wasn’t a country with a near-farcical justice system that the US government shouldn’t want Americans anywhere near. The President of the United States cannot use the power and resources of the United States to get foreign countries (Or anyone!) to help his reelection. Especially not via legal investigation, aka, corrupting the justice system of other countries, even if those countries have actual justice systems.

Of course, China doesn’t, so asking them to investigate HBiden isn’t even asking for an actual investigation, like he could have hypothetically had with the Ukraine. It’s basically asking them to imprison him, because Chinese justice is a joke. Or at least require him to stay away from China and anywhere that might extradite him to China.Report

The US does get something…it gets an investigation of corruption that we should have done but might not be within our laws. Why the hell is the son of the vp getting a sweetheart deal of a job he’s not qualified for? Why is the vp pressing for a end to the investigation? Could this corruption have an influence in our country? Worth an investigation.Report

Tf the US government wanted an investigation of Hunter Biden, it should have _asked_ for it, via the channels that exist to do that.

A lot of people seem to be missing the fact there actually _is_ a way for the US to ask for foreign governments to open investigations. A total totally above-board and open way. Of course there is. We do it all the time.

The US…literally has not done that WRT Hunter Biden. That is because there’s no actual grounds to investigate him. Like, literally, there’s nothing they could ask the Ukraine to investigate him for. At all. No possible crime. They can’t file any sort of ‘We believe this person has violated your laws, please look into it’ request, because Hunter Biden _has not_.

Even if the ‘influence peddling’ worked, it means any hypothetical wrongdoing would have to be __Joe Biden’s_, and it would have taken place here in the US. Not in the Ukraine, not by Hunter Biden. It is perfectly legal for Hunter Biden to accept all sorts of gifts. It is not legal for Joe Biden to be swayed by that.(1)

Which means, if the Trump admin asked asked for an investigate of Hunter Biden through official channels…it would get immediately rejected by the Ukraine. On the record.

What they tried to do was extort the Ukraine government to open an investigation anyway, or at least publicly announce one and then sorta screw around until after the election.

1. And at that point, you should be asking yourself: Why hasn’t the DoJ opened an investigation into Joe Biden then? And the answer is: The DoJ is well aware they have absolutely no case.Report

They why was Biden so intent on getting the head of Ukraine to replace the prosecutor investigating the company that his son was working for? For 50k a month pay and for which he was completely unqualified for?Report

Because a) the prosecutor was not actually investigating the company (And especially not Hunter Biden), but rather the behavior of the owner from when the owner held public office, well before Hunter Biden joined the company, except that b) the prosecutor was not investigating the owner to start with, but rather was corrupt and trolling for bribes, which c) the prosecutor had finished doing by that point anyway, so d) the entire international community, including the EU and the IMF wanted him replaced with one who would, plus that was the official stance of the Obama administration, so Biden was actually just ‘implementing US policy’ and not ‘intent’ on anything.

This really isn’t a complicated story for people who bother to get the _slightest_ amount of facts. The idea that it could have been corruption on the part of Joe Biden is wrong in _several different_ ways.Report

Oh, and can I point out how absurd a response that is from you? I point out that ‘If the Trump administration wanted to actually do the thing it is claiming it wants, it has entirely legal and above-board ways to do it, which it has not bothered to do even at this point‘, and you, instead of addressing this, decide to repeat the original allegations.

No, sorry, my point already disproved yours. And it still does. Even without any further information from me. To restate the facts:

1) If the Trump administration wanted an actual investigation into Hunter Biden, they could ask for one entirely legally via the normal communication between the DoJ and whatever it’s called in the Ukraine.

2) They have not asked for that.

Conclusion: They do not want an actual investigation opened.

My next claim is: The reason the Trump administration does not want to do that is, is because there is literally no reason for Ukraine to open an investigation, so that would not work. They don’t even have a crime to assert he’s committed.

Do _you_ have a competing explanation? A different justification for the Trump administration not using the very obvious and entirely legal method, and instead using extortion and sending private lawyers and all sorts of nonsense, for months?

If not, my point is proven, that the Trump administration must feel that an actual real investigation into Hunter Biden would go _very poorly_ for them, disproving their imaginary claims of corruption immediately. So instead they’re running around trying to get the Ukraine to announce more investigations of things somewhat near Hunter Biden to slander him more.

And, I repeat: I think Hunter Biden is ‘guilty’ of trading on his name to get a do-nothing job, and that Burisma hoped that would somehow influence the Obama administration. I also am fairly certain both of those things are not illegal.Report

I’m not really paying attention to this issue that much. Frankly I assume this type of thing happens all the time, as I said above. Deals, both gov’t and personal, get made…but I also don’t think this rises to the level of impeachment. Your mileage may vary.Report

Perhaps, if I may, suggest that your* bar for impeachment is far too high.

Remember, it’s for high crimes and misdemeanors, the bar doesn’t have to be very high at all.

*It’s not just you, way too many people have the bar set too high, because it’s not about the person, or the crime, but about the party. Even though successfully removing Trump from office leaves the GOP in power (Pence is a die hard Republican, after all), the GOP is afraid that they’ll forever be seen as “The Party that had a POTUS impeached”, instead of “The Party that acted to remove an dangerous aberration.”Report

the GOP is afraid that they’ll forever be seen as “The Party that had a POTUS impeached”, instead of “The Party that acted to remove an dangerous aberration.”

No. These guys don’t have a time horizon which looks past the next election. If they could look further they’d wonder if Trump has hit bottom yet (no), and whether they’d be better off with Pence (yes).

The problem is Trump is popular with the base, and this hits the radar as a misdemeanor. They could impeach him over this, they don’t have too. The calculation is always “will this help me get elected”, “will this result in me being primaried”.

So we need to convince Trump’s anti-elite base that it’s an impeachable offense to accuse a Dem elite of corruption when his son has a well-paid-but-worthless job with a corrupt oil company that the Dem elite personally deals with on occasion. The median household income per year for this typical voter is less than what that oil company pays Hunter per month.

I don’t think Trump is going to look like a “dangerous aberration” to our hypothetical typical voter.

To be clear I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong and we could then move on to President Pence. For that matter I wouldn’t even mind Trump making a public deal where in exchange for him resigning Pence pardons him. That might be a real deal sweetener considering what he’s probably been up to for the last 40 years and especially the last 40 months.Report

Oh, and one other thing…if Biden’s kid was on the up and up..there’s no need to quash the investigation. IF the prosecutor is looking for bribes…just pay it. HIs hands are clean…they company paid it. Why the need for the vp to lean on ukraine to quash it?Report

Do you think they aren’t trying? Do you think they wouldn’t release the hacked emails [or texts or whatever] if they did? And, at this point, they have no idea if they would be helping Joe or Liz or Bernie or Marianne… but they’d do it no matter who would benefit owing to their particular dislike of Trump.

Would they make it known to Joe or Liz or Bernie or Marianne that they did so? Absolutely. Would we expect JLBorM to act horrified? Certainly. Would they report it? I expect so. Would it stop the leak? No… would JLBorM chortle all the way to the presidency (discreetly, of course)? You betcha. Would they open multi-lateral Nuclear talks with Iran as President? Of course, after a proper period of faux penalty box time.

That’s the professionalism we expect, no, demand, from our Political class.Report

My counter-intuitive thought for the weekend comes via Rubio/Romney/Amash and Brooks/Arnade and the impeachment. What fascinates me is that three years after Trump, the Republican Party and its main Presidential Probables still can’t pivot to the new political alignment of their party (for simplicity sake, lets call it fiscally liberal, labor friendly, socially conservative, with a non-imperial foreign policy). Which means that no-one can assuage “the base” that removing the incompetent Trump will be beneficial to the Party and therefore they have to back Trump during impeachment because without Trump they can’t get the nominal number of votes necessary to be a non-Democrat in their elected office.

They simultaneously still believe that *after* Trump the Republican base will turn to them and their unchanged political preferences *and* that they are powerless to effect any sort of after Trump scenario.

And Pence? Think about it… if there was one Republican politician who would be willing to move into the mythical Upper Left political quadrant… there’d be an after-Trump scenario that would enable the Republican Party to ditch Trump.

I wondered if maybe Trump was the realignment we feel coming… I’m leaning more towards Trump being the failed realignment… the so called Disjointed Presidency that presages the Realignment. There’s opportunity out there for 2024 (their could have been oppty for 2020)… but it won’t be Rubio, Romney or Amash (or any of the current Dem leading contenders).Report

Serious question… Can you point to Republicans anywhere getting elected on those four points? In my state, up to the state legislature level, and possibly one of the US Representatives, I can point to elected Democrats that match that profile, but no Republicans that I can think of.Report

Serious answer… that’s expected behavior as this is/was fertile ground for the Democrats… Realignment stalks both parties as the Democrats increasingly retreat from that quadrant as a trend, not as a requirement.

Also national and local politics can and do run at different rates. But then, that’s also the basis of what makes it counter-intuitive… the Republican Party in its infrastructure – including its Politicians – is out of alignment with its base… but in so far as the Democratic party is abandoning this quadrant, voters aren’t following the local Democratic party out, they are instead identifiying with the National Republican message in – even if that means the garden variety local Republican is still a Romney/Rubio Chamber of Commerce thing.

It isn’t stable or sustainable. And to reiterate, that’s what realignment looks like… those folks winning as democrats will only remain democrats as long as the democratic party will have them, or they don’t see better opportunities as [New Party] or some [New Party] guy/gal doesn’t coopt their voters with a message that aligns better nationally and locally simultaneously. And those winning as Republicans will only continue to do so as long as they don’t reveal themselves to be (too) out of step with the National party… hence the deer in the headlights position of Republicans.

Nothing is inevitable in politics, not even demographics… what the other side(s) do will always change the dynamic.

My larger point is why the Republican Party is completely Gear-Locked and unable to manoeuvre.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.